Python Regular Expression and Metacharacters

Question

There is a variable which is:

line="s(a)='asd'"

I am trying to find a part which includes "s()".

I tried using:

re.match("s(*)",line)

But it seems that It is not able to search for characters that includes ( )

Is there a way to find it and print it in python?

Answer 1

Your regex is the problem here.

You can use:

>>> line="s(a)='asd'"
>>> print re.findall(r's\([^)]*\)', line)
['s(a)']

RegEx Breakup:

s     # match letter s
\(    # match literal (
[^)]* # Using a negated character class, match 0 more of any char that is not )
\)    $ match literal (

• r is used for raw string in Python.